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Monday, January 23, 2012

Chuggin' on down the svenska line...

Hej! Min hjärnagör ontfrån att sökasvenska dokumenthela dagen!

I've been spending my time today scouring the messages and conversing with some very nice Swedes on Anbytaforum. A forum for the online magazine RÖTTER. I signed up a year ago, about the time I made a few inquiries on my Jonsson and Stenman lines on Ancestry.com. After not receiving any hits in the ancestry forum for a while, and the overwhelming feeling I got trying to search in a Swedish forum, (and, ok, to be honest, I had some awesome finds on some different lines and kind of left my Swedish lines in the dust).... I just forgot about it. Fast forward a year later, and here I am thinking, well, I'm gonna try to google my great grandfather Helge, and see if anything pops up. BING. Oooh, hey look, something came up! Oh wait, that's just my post from a year ago. : / Meh. I click on my own link anyway. Oooh, hey look, a couple replies! Alright! I received the following information in response to my Ancestry Query:

It's been awhile since your post so you may have already found this, but:

And then this from another member:Helge's father Gustaf Jonsson came from Markaryd parish in southern Sweden. He moved to Nederkalix in 1885.

Gustaf
Jonsson b. 28 Jan 1858 is my great-greatgrandfather's cousin. As far as
I know, almost everyone on Gustaf's father's side was born in Markaryd.
Some have moved to other places later in life, but we still have many
relatives in Markaryd.

YAAYYYYYYY, Happy dance! So needless to say, this chipped out a little hole in the brickwall I had come to in my Grandfather's Jonsson line... and yes, of course, sparked an obsessive giddy searching spree.

This spree led me back to the Anbytaforum. And this time, I wasn't going to let the Swedish language barrier stop me. Go Go Google Translator! Alright, after the first day, it did start to get to me again. But then I found their English discussion section, and all hope was renewed! :)

I received swift and knowledgeable responses from some resident Svenskar. Oh God Bless their hearts! And I learned a few very important details when it came to my Swedish Mysteries. One being, things change in Sweden. A lot. Towns, parishes, counties. And not just that. The SURNAMES.... Oh heavens to betsy, the SURNAMES! There was a period of time until about the 1850's that they used a patronymical system. Then, some people did, and some people abandoned it, and just stuck with one single last name. Some soldiers were given new surnames. Some took on names of others in their town but were not related. Before 1900, women never took their husband's last name. Talk about a surprise to me! But, of course, before 1900, sometimes they did. aye aye aye. It seems there was no real conformity to surnames in the 19th century in Sweden. This scares me. But the best part about it were the helpful people on that forum who took time to explain all these things to an ignorant Swedish-American. And not only that, but also searched their records, and got me back another generation or two into my Swedish side. I was referred to the Nederkalix forum there (which is...don't panic...in Swedish.) and that people there will want to take a peek at all of this, since both my great grandparents, who had emigrated completely separately, but from the same Parish, ended up finding each other in the United States and marrying. So I made my attempts at posting in the Swedish language portion of the forum. Here's to hoping copious amounts of information come to follow! :)

If you are a Swedish descendant, I highly recommend Anbytaforum. It has an extreme wealth of information and friendly people there to give you a hand. It's free to join, and with Google Translator on your side, you're golden. I'm bummed I didn't tap into it a year ago when I signed up. Well, that'll learn me.

I have some information on the Swedish branch of my family tree, which was compiled by a distant cousin of mine, who hired a researcher in Sweden. I've never dared to try to research it further. As much as I hate our patriarchal naming system on a personal level, on a genealogical level I much prefer it to Nils Pehrsson being the son of Pehr Andersson, who's the son of Anders Jonasson... I hope my descendants won't be too confused by my last name being Lavoie, my partner's being Laudinsky, and our future child being a Lavoie-Laudinsky!

About Me

Welcome to my genealogy blog. I began this for family to keep up on my recent findings, should they care to, and also as an outlet for my excitement.
I have found that for the majority of the population, sharing your latest excitement of an ancestral finding in a conversation is usually met with an "Oh....neat" (commence the crickets....) except of course for my dear husband who tries so kindly to express interest,and the occasional friend you meet that happens to share the same fascination. In which case, one can talk genealogy for hours.
But no. This blog is for the former. May they never have to suffer through my confusing excited blabbering over finding a picture of a hundred year old tombstone 2,000 miles away, or have their brains bored with my trouble concerning patronymical surnames. :)